GVT: Girls Suffer First Loss of Season

By Alexa Tsay

Andover Girls Tennis suffered its first loss of the season to Milton Academy by a margin of 11-4 to bring its record to 8-1. First seed Reagan Posorske ’17 was one of two singles players to win her match, beating her opponent 6-1, 6-2 to maintain her undefeated record for the season.

“I think I had an advantage over [my opponent] with my consistency. She was going for too many risky shots and making a lot of unforced errors, which allowed me to get ahead in our sets and gain a lot of confidence,” said Posorske.

Lee said, “I’m proud of how I played. My opponent had strong groundstrokes but was inconsistent at times. My strategy was to stay in each point, hustle to every ball and not give up. And it worked.”

Milton, Andover’s strongest competitor, had swept all but one match going into Wednesday. Andover’s 11-4 defeat became Milton’s closest win this season.

“Coming into our match, we knew this would be tough competition,” said Lee. “It’s ultimately hard to compete with girls who focus purely on tennis year round.”

Co-Captain Isabella Haegg ’16 added, “[Milton is] a really deep team. They’re all day students and they’re all tournament players, so they have tons of match practice whereas our match practice is what we get during the season and is usually against girls who aren’t as strong. They’re used to playing those tough games, so they already had a leg up in that sense.”

Posorske said, “Milton had an obvious advantage. They did a good job of executing important and game-winning points.”

Lee said, “In the end we were less consistent as a whole, and the Milton girls did a good job of finishing off each point. I think for the future as a team we need to think about finding a balance between defensive and offensive shots, especially since a lot of the time the Milton girls took control of the point first.”

In doubles, first seeds Posorske and Price lost 8-1; second seeds Haegg and Park fell 8-2; and Charlotte Welch ’18 and Madeleine Mayhew ’15 came close in a 8-6 defeat at third, faltering in the end after holding a 6-3 lead.

Despite the 11-4 loss, Andover played better than their scored; the match was a close one due to the sheer number of games that Andover gave away by losing deuce points.

“It is encouraging that our matches were so close, even though we were definitely feeling the loss of Dariya [Zhumashova ’17],” added Haegg. “We just have to tighten things up and be more patient with the point so we don’t give them any unforced errors. This loss makes us even more motivated and arms us with great strategy for when we face Milton again at New Englands.”

Andover looks to rebound from its loss with a strong finish in the Kent tournament on Saturday.

Editor’s Note: Isabella Haegg ’16 is a Sports Editor and Lara Danovitch ’16 is a Business Manager for The Phillipian vol. CXXXVIII.